Screwed, Blu’d

and Tattooed

by

Reef Perkins

***Previous Deeds***

Blu Yunger grew up in Hinckley, Ohio, seasonal home of the Hinckley buzzard. The Hinckley is a cosmopolitan scavenger that every year, for reasons unknown, migrates to Key West to shit upon the tropical paradise at will. Some Hincklanders called the turkey buzzards, “turd smugglers.” Blu was born long and skinny with a hefty Adam’s apple, curly red hair and a third testicle. According to his mom, the attending midwife said the triple was an “O-Man!” The auxiliary orb eventually caused Blu to walk like an old cowboy. After three years in third grade and problems with punctuation, primarily hyphens, Blu’s hope, (he only had one,) began to fade but his curiosity was as insatiable and indiscriminant as fire. He always remembered what Mr. Bork, his ninth grade English teacher told him. ”Young Yunger,” Bork leaned over, “Stop and look at the greatest works of art in the world then, look at your own work. Which do you like best? I rest my case.” Bork patted Blu on the back and walked away with a knowing smile. Unfortunately, but predictably, Blu liked neither his own work nor that of anyone else, including the too familiar Bork. Fortunately, this intellectual set back failed to disturb Blu and his education still proved to be worthwhile because, in the tenth grade, he discovered that if you said a word over and over it eventually made no sense at all. This knowledge was a constant, his first knowledge, and Blu became a slave to this God-given understanding. The words doily, dwarf and hoof were his favorites at the time and there were others, of course, but in the end he settled on hoof as his default word. He couldn’t remember the others anymore and used to think his lack of short-term memory was funny, until he forgot why. At age twenty-one, Blu graduated from high school with a wrinkled diploma, a bad case of zits and a serious disregard for conventional wisdom. This led to short-term work in a number of jobs including bocce ball pit man, slot machine hopper, hog slopper, mung bean picker and later as a vector control officer. Blu looked “vector” up in the dictionary, after he got the job. The first definition he found read, “A genetics agent such as a plasmid or bacteriophage that is used in genetic modification to transfer a segment of foreign DNA into a bacterium or other cell.” Blu felt challenged and a little pissed. All that work for nine bucks an hour? He thought he was supposed to point at things or kill bugs, but he was an Officer and got to wear a uniform, so he stayed a year. The only thing Blu could do with certainty was cast a shadow and even then things didn’t always go his way in this florescent light world. At age twenty-seven Blu pulled three weeks jail time in the Hinckley Hard House for Unruly Humans. He got nabbed stealing a burglar alarm kit from the On Sale rack at Radio Shack. He never forgot that night in the shower. A bunch of soapy, wet guys surrounded him and looked at his third orb. One persistent observer of misery, Jimmy Ray Bobray, produced a waterproof camera and took several pictures. He later mailed one of the photos to Blu’s ex-girl friend, a shot from Blu’s waist down to his knees. Her unexpected reply arrived at the Hard House in a scented envelope. “I don’t like the way they cut your hair, Blu,” she wrote, “it makes your nose look too long.” Everyone laughed and got to sniff the envelope. To help the hard time pass, Blu played Domino. He only had one. It was sad to watch. On Blu’s last night in jail, a con, or possibly a perp, named Hunk Gunderson offered to give Blu a time-honored jailhouse tattoo. Hunk had his own tat. Across Hunk’s broad back Blu had seen a black-inked snake and the words “…tread on me.” Before Blu could comment Hunk explained, “The Don’t word wore off from sleeping on my left side too much. “ Blu stuck his arm through the bars and into the adjacent cell. After two hours he pulled it back and stared at his new tat. It was done with a sharpened shoelace tip and dense purple dye from grape Jell-O that the Hunkster cooked down. The tat read, Born To Loose. Blu mentioned the spelling error to Hunk. “Don’t worry about it man, I was into O’s. Dat extra O is free on me.” Blu passed Hunk a half-full roll of toilet paper as a thank you. He was released and after twenty-one days of rehab in the Witless Protection Program, Blu rejoined the general population. He reviewed his options and decided to follow the turkey buzzards south for the winter. Ugly enough to blend in most places, Blu migrated to Florida where he ended up hanging with Q-tips and blue hairs on Miami Beach. The older women loved his red hair and tried to snatch it out. He learned to keep it short. Blu looked for God but found Bingo instead. BINGO, just the word made his shorts tight. He often pronounced the word backwards, OGNIB, to avoid making a scene. Blu became a player and was eventually invited to attend the exclusive All You Can Eat-Early Worm Special, gaming sessions held in the fashionable Wrinkle City Room at the Early Bird Casino. To make a little pocket change at the Wrinkle, Blu charged some of the more mature ladies five bucks for the opportunity to look at, photograph and even mail close-up pictures of his third orb to interested parties. He usually started by unfolding his special one-man photo-tent and setting up the “U-Pick-Em” sign that his clients loved. “It’s a gift,” Blu told his customers in advance, nipping unseemly questions in the bud. Taking cash, jump-starting a few pacemakers, selling envelopes, even stamps and signing Polaroid photos, Blu had his first taste of fame. Finally, one night, his night, Blu won a four-hundred dollar jackpot in the Wrinkle City Room. Four-hundred dollars! In high spirits Blu Yunger borrowed the Ford.

Ready for more?

Click here to get your own copy of Screwed, Blu’d and Tattooed [and other stories] by Reef Perkins…

About the Author

Captain Mark T. “Reef” Perkins is a marine surveyor with a colorful past. From commanding a 150-foot 300 DWT US Army diving ship off Vietnam to smuggling in the Caribbean, Reef Perkins has become a living legend. A graduate of both the US Army Engineer Officer Candidate School and the US Navy Salvage Officers School, he’s a man comfortable in or out of the water. Raised in rural Michigan, Reef now lives in Key West where he can get his feet wet. He is the author of the bestselling memoir, Sex, Salvage & Secrets.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING eBOOKS

Published by Whiz Bang LLC, 926 Truman Avenue, Key West, Florida 33040, USA

Screwed, Blu’d and Tattooed copyright © 2013 by Reef Perkins. Electronic compilation/ print edition copyright © 2013 by Whiz Bang LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized ebook editions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. While the author has made every effort to provide accurate information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their contents.

For information contact:

[email protected]

[optin-cat id=”26188″]